Many if not most sporting events are characterized by a few exciting events (hereinafter referred to as “Key Events’) interspersed between long periods of otherwise unremarkable play activity. For example, a baseball game comprises mostly, for example, batter preparation, pitched balls and strikes, inning changes, and batters not getting on base, with only a small percentage of the overall game time involving hits, runs, stolen bases, double plays, exciting catches and the like. Similarly, for sports like soccer, football, hockey and others, Key Events constitute only a small portion of the total time the game is actually played.
When listening to a broadcast or streamed sports game on a radio or other user device, much of the game can be somewhat monotonous to the casual fan beyond whatever interest the game's announcers can generate, particularly when the transmission includes only audio. A need therefore exists for user devices that enable a listener to be notified of and then hear just the “high points” of a game, while listening to a different radio channel or going about some other activity during the rest of the game.
At the other end of the listener spectrum lies the sports enthusiast, sports handicapper, sports “pool” enthusiast or sports gambler. These users often try to watch or listen to multiple games at once. For such users, a Sunday afternoon packed with multiple and concurrent games can be challenging, inasmuch as such a listener is often conflicted as to which game to listen to, and never knows when “the big play” may occur in any one of them. Thus, a similar need also exists for a user device that enables a user to know, ahead of time, which of many games to tune to and when, and to then automatically, or automatically offer to, tune to the appropriate channel in sufficient time to hear or view a “big play” or other Key Event in each game.
Accordingly, a need exists for a Key Event alert function in a radio receiver or other user device. Such functionality would alert a user before a Key Event occurs, giving the listener sufficient time to tune to the channel and hear the excitement unfold. Moreover, much of the excitement of listening to a big play is hearing the setup that leads to it, such as, for example, a power hitter walking up to bat, a football team taking offensive formation before the snap, or various passes and maneuvers preceding a successful soccer goal. Thus, a need also exists for a Key Event alert operation that can alert a user well before the actual Key Event occurs, thus giving the user time to tune to the channel and hear or view relevant activity preceding the Key Event, as well as any relevant post-event activity, such as, for example, newscaster commentary and crowd reaction.